


throu daun

by basically_thearlaich



Series: Short and Shallow [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fighting, Not Canon Compliant, Wanheda!Clarke, at all, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 20:22:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17874221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basically_thearlaich/pseuds/basically_thearlaich
Summary: throu daunv. "fight"from "throw down"





	throu daun

**Author's Note:**

> I have, literally, not watched The 100 since like... the beginning of S4 I think; so not only am I relying on fanfic to guide me in this (which: bad idea) I am also seriously deep in denial about a whole lot of things. And I like Clarke and Roan together. So there.

 

> “ _And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!”_
> 
> – (J.R.R.Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Mirror of Galadriel)

 

*****

Old enough to be sentenced to death at sixteen. Old enough to be sent onto a planet they weren’t certain was inhabitable at seventeen. Old enough to be set into a 30:70 group of young men and women. Old enough to be considered able to ‘figure it out’. Old enough to be a field medic for a bunch of kids in a war-zone. Old enough to celebrate her eighteenth birthday in The Mountain while their parents stalled for a shaky peace. Old enough to have to take lives in order to save those of her own people. Old enough to survive the wilderness on her own. Old enough to survive imprisonment multiple times, old enough to _have_ to rely on her implant (old enough to make them pay for it).

Old enough to be a political tool at nineteen. Old enough to be considered for marriageinto another clan.

But not old enough to make her own decisions. Still not old enough to be respected as a leader in her own right (after all she’s done for her people). Not old enough to decide for herself who she wants to tie herself to (if even). Not old enough to understand the traditions of the ground. Not old enough to be trusted to read between the lines. Not old enough to hold a gun (when she has learned to wield bow and arrow and her hands are so red already). Not old enough to traverse a sparse little wood alone (when she has been wandering the Ices on her own for months).

“I don’t think, _Mother_ , that you know me very well after all if you think I will allow Arkadia to run me over like this.”

“Run you over? Clarke, we’re trying to broker peace for us here.”

Us. _Osir._ _Oso._ It’s a curious word in _Trigedasleng_. Both meaning ‘us’, one being exclusive, the other inclusive. Us-here or Us-all. She doesn’t think there is a distinguishing facet in _Gonasleng_ , when, in _Trigedasleng_ , it will make all the difference. _Gonasleng_ will just let you muddle along at the side of an ally until you realize that ‘us’ never included you. Much like Arkadia. She understands now why the _Kru_ prefer their own language to the complicating _Gonasleng_. Trig is much more clearer. Cleaner.

“Yes. Peace for Arkadia.” Arkadia, who has lured them behind their fences when they had been weakened from a prison they had had to fight their way out of and then taken their weapons; smashing, without understanding, everything they had worked for.

Arkadia who would have let them rot in Mount Weather. Arkadia who imprisoned them to stop them from going after their own. Arkadia who spat on their shaky truce with the Grounders. Arkadia who took their weapons away first and then chastised their helplessness.

“We are one people, Clarke. You are children.”

“We are not. Neither. We have not been since One Hundred of us hurtled down to a planet you did not know was inhabitable and the rest of you remained where they were.”

“Nevertheless you will be wed.” _Wanheda_ has a particular dislike for Thelonius Jaha and his pomposity. His ignorance. She cannot believe that a politician would be so blind to the rules of a system he is trying to work in.

“Seeing as I am your prisoner, I will have to bow to your decisions. With the concession to _kru-_ tradition.”

“What kind of tradition are you referring to?”

“My _houmon_ will have to win me.”

“Win you?”

With fists and blood and swords. She will have to be won. She will not give in quietly. She will stick to the last dregs of her capability to see her people to relative safety. She will not go gently into that fucking night. She is _Wanheda_ – she does not think they know what that means (she has sullied her soul with the death of more than seven hundred people to save the precious few she has still remaining; she has and will walk over corpses for the people that are hers).

“Win me. Everyone of the ground-kru will know what it means. And I will abide to no liaison otherwise.”

“We could deny your concession.”

“You could. But then you would have to impose your will over twelve kru of the ground. Their rules are chiselled in stone: no marriage can stand for longer than a year and a day if one party is unwilling. Caveat being the winning of the unwilling party in fair combat.”

Meaning public combat with the purpose of finding a suitable _houmon_. She’s seen it in other villages on her travels.

“Would it not be easier on you to not tell us?”

“My reasons are my own. As are your decisions: you can have the same problem in a year and a day, face the struggles of a truce based on a forced union that no ground-kru-member will entirely accept, ending likely in a fight before even the first six months have passed, or you can concede to this.”

“So shall it be then.”

“Thelonius!”

“Abby. She seems set in this. As we are already forcing her hand in one aspect, I do not see why we would take this from her. She wants to try her hand in combat, she shall have the chance.”

She hears what he doesn’t say, what he so obviously thinks: Whatever chance she can have against men who are more battle-hardened than her, taller than her, stronger than her.

Thelonius Jaha thinks she will lose to the first challenger he will put in the ring with her.

He will swallow those thoughts and rue them as they sit in his stomach like stones. Until she has found her Champion, she does not give. _Wanheda_ has not spent a year in the Ices sitting on her hands; she has not survived _Winter_ by clinging to frailty and passiveness.

The fights last for a week and while her ferocity excites more and more suitors into the ring – everyone gets a go once – the Council of Arkadia despairs with every green boy and girl that she sends bleeding and reeling out of the ring again. Octavia cheers her on in progressively lewd Trig with Lincoln trying to soothe his hellcat of a lover at first (she thinks it might be on _Heda’s_ behalf) before resignedly – and then more enthusiastically – joining her.

Clarke knows who her people are when, on the third day of the tournament, the entirety of _Skai-kru_ clear a square of seats for themselves in the benches of the arena, the symbol of _Wanheda_ clearly drawn onto their cheeks and their foreheads, sewn into their jackets. They sit apart from Arkadia and it doesn’t take long until Raven has to hold Bellamy back from socking Thelonius in the jaw. Clarke realizes that they have found out; that they have picked sides. That they have picked her side. They are hers now (truly), raucous and gaudy as they are in their cheering her on, but she derives strength from their energy and topples man after man, woman after woman. One warrior after another.

She refuses to wane even when the rations of her MREs become less in the evenings and the mornings, and Jaha’s steely gaze watches her devour every last bite through the glass of her confinement cell. She refuses to let anyone but her Champion best her.

When he comes, she knows it.

She has seen this man in the Ices. She has fought against him and then with him. She has learned _Winter_ from him. She knows what the markings on his face mean, what the white on his cheeks and the black around his eyes means. And she knows what the crown of jaws and antlers on his head mean. When he steps into the ring, the crowd hushes for a bare second before hisses and whispers make their rounds and _Skai-kru_ is quiet for the second it takes for the King of Azgeda to take off his heavy cloak and toss it over the back of his war-horse.

His clothing makes him look thicker than he is – makes him look slower than he is. She knows the exaggerated swagger in his steps and the weapon he draws – he is _good_ with the _atgeir_ , as a generally mounted warrior, it’s his favoured weapon but she knows that his preference has no weight on his capability with any other weapon put into his hands.

She breaks the wood of his polearm with a hack of her shield and a decisively placed foot as she dances past him. He grins ferociously at her when they take up positions again and he draws his sword.

“I liked that one”, he says almost petulantly. She doesn’t answer (she knows he has a _favourite_ , a _named_ weapon; this one is not it).

They dance with blades and fists, she smears his _jus_ over her already bruised knuckles when she rams her fist into his chin and he gets her back with a shallow cut to her temple. She exhausts her library of manoeuvres and some he counters, some he doesn’t; some he approves the ingenuity of, some he scoffs at. It’s only when they stand opposite of each other again that she sketches a mocking bow and his eyes laugh at her before he steps in and _moves._ Some of his manoeuvres she knows. Counters with ease and a half-hearted groan – she doesn’t need a rehearsal of their first encounters. But then he steps it up and while she manages to counter his steps, some manoeuvres hasten her into retreat and defence and _quick thinking to get out_ – his eyes shine with approval when she manages to and he laughs almost boyishly when she gets hits in too despite her retreat.

In the end, it doesn’t take more than minutes for her to tumble him and for him to take her down with him. She lets him roll her onto her back under him – lines her body up against his, feels _warm_ for the first time in seven days ( _safestupidsmallprotected_ )– and doesn’t struggle when he smears their faces with the blood of his split lip, with the sweat that is dripping from both of them, with the chalk-white-coal-black of his mask. Something inside her chest gives and crumbles inward with panic-inducing fragility and for a second she has no breath before he pushes it to her lips and her nose catches up on the necessity of air. He has her up on her feet by then. The cheers and jeers of the crowd are deafening.

“ _Klark kom Skai-kru_!”, _Heda’s_ voice carries over the commotion in the stands over the bout and Clarke is steadied by the warm-rough-strong hand gripping her lower arm, “ _Wanheda_. Do you accept the claim?”

“I accept.”

 _Heda’s_ steps are uncommonly heavy when she descends from the wooden podium she has been lounging on for the last week. She reaches their sides, their hands still gripping the lower-arm of each other – Clarke is not letting go of him any time soon (not until she must).

“ _Roan kom Azgeda, Azhefa_. Do you accept your bride?”

She is closer now and he wouldn’t need to, but his words are loud and clear when he answers, carrying through the arena and the seats: “I accept.” His pupils are ice-shard-bright from within the blackened hollows of his eyes even as he bends – almost courteously – to slip his hand from her elbow and towards her mangled knuckles. There is something – an emotion – on his face before he presses the harsh-looking but soft (yielding) lips, reddened with his blood, to her blackened skin. “ _Wilyu teik_ _in_ _azhefa gon houmon? Wilyu ste Azplana?_ ”

The question is quiet and contrastingly intimate after they have been rolling around in sand, spilling their sweat and blood onto each other.

Her hand turns in his, catches his cheek with some difficulty – her fingers are broken, she knows, but she has ignored the ache until now – “ _Aiwil_.”

 _Heda_ is quiet next to them, witness as much as she is chaperon. Clarke pulls him closer with uncoordinated, hurting, hands, makes him bend to her to shield her lips from the sharp eyes of _Heda_ before she whispers her own questions: _“Wilyu teik_ _in_ _Wanheda gon houmon? Wilyu ste_ _Skai-heda?_ _Wilyu glong ai op gon_ _breik ain kru au?_ _”_

It’s a lot to ask. She knows her people. They are not easy. They are not submissive. But they are hers. She will not take a man who will not help her get them away from Arkadia. His head tilts back from hers, gives her a deep look as he straightens and she barely reaches his throat but she _will_ kill him if he doesn’t agree – she needs a Champion and she needs her _kru_ away from Arkadia; she needs her people away from under the thumb of _branw_ _o_ _da_ and _Wanheda_ will not stop for Ice.

Maybe it’s the promise of Death that he sees in her eyes when his lips part into what should be a smile but looks more like a wolf baring his teeth: _“Sha”_ , he rumbles, _“Aiwil.”_

“Good.”, _Heda’s_ voice is cold and cutting – displeased – but _Wanheda_ meets her bright eyes dead-on and doesn’t flinch. _Heda_ has made the proposition the Council of Arkadia herself; has marketed Clarke as valuable in politic terms and would now reap what she had sown. “Now get off my sands and prepare for your union this evening.”

Clarke thinks, from the sound of the _Heda’s_ voice, she should not look forward to it. But she does.

“ _Ai sonraun laik yu sonraun”_ , he promises later at the fire, his hands covering her, cupping mending, bruised skin with callouses that hide his gentleness.

“ _Osir keryon ste teina”_ , she echoes the ritual reply as she lifts onto her toes, carefully, and allows the soft descent of his lips onto hers – he does not take more than she is willing to give and the ice in his eyes melts in the light of the fire.

 

 

(Arkadia does not know what is coming for them when _Azplana_ and _Azhefa_ arrive with 40 horses. They try to protest when Octavia mounts the closest horse and moves it to stand behind the couple, but the rest of the young people do follow. Even Raven Reyes makes it a point to limp up to a warrior and demand he not let her fall _or else_ while struggling to make it up into the saddle. The man is amused and annoyed at the same time but a single look from his _Azplana_ has him concede to the demands of the woman grimacing against her pain in his lap.)

( _Heda_ regrets her treachery when Arkadia is infested with a technical virus that spreads into _Polis_ and halts only before the _Az_ ; insurmountable as it is.)

(When _pramfaya_ comes, _Wanheda_ lays with her _Az_ _hefa_ for the first time and the bunker around them echoes with similar sentiments of _azgeda-gona_ and _skai-kru_ – sometimes mingled, sometimes not – who transform their fear of possibly dying into something more manageable. They survive and _Azplana_ does not behead the man called Murphy when he calls them all Cockroaches the next day.)

*****

 


End file.
